Difference between revisions of "1984 AIME Problems/Problem 14"

(added (informal) solution)
(See also)
Line 7: Line 7:
  
 
== See also ==
 
== See also ==
* [[1984 AIME Problems/Problem 13 | Previous problem]]
+
{{AIME box|year=1984|num-b=13|num-a=15}}
* [[1984 AIME Problems/Problem 15 | Next problem]]
+
* [[AIME Problems and Solutions]]
* [[1984 AIME Problems]]
+
* [[American Invitational Mathematics Examination]]
 +
* [[Mathematics competition resources]]

Revision as of 14:27, 6 May 2007

Problem

What is the largest even integer that cannot be written as the sum of two odd composite numbers?

Solution

Let the desired integer be $2n$ for some positive integer $n$. Notice that we must have $2n-9$, $2n-15$, $2n-21$, $2n-25$, ..., $2n-k$ all prime for every odd composite number $k$ less than $2n$. Therefore $n$ must be pretty small. Also, we find that $n$ is not divisible by 3, 5, 7, and so on. Clearly, $n$ must be a prime. Um, we can just check small primes and guess that $n=19$ gives us our maximum value of 38.

See also

1984 AIME (ProblemsAnswer KeyResources)
Preceded by
Problem 13
Followed by
Problem 15
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
All AIME Problems and Solutions